I happened to pick up a book to look at while I was waiting for a computer--I Forgot to Remember by Su Meck. I flipped to the last chapter or so, and she's talking about not being able to remember anything, some days not even how to read or do math, and that she is too embarrassed to ask or explain sometimes. The description of her mindset is so familiar.


"Early on, I had learned to swallow my questions altogether or to only occasionally ask Jim or the kids about stuff I didn't understand. I clung to Jim's side in public, following his cues, speaking only when I was absolutely sure of the right thing to say."

That's how I feel a lot of the time, most of my life I have felt that way. That I remember.

I was "remembering" some stuff from my teen life (someone says "lie") and of course it isn't pretty, about my mom. I want to figure out the lie before I say it.

I already feel I have told my Al-anon friends a version of the truth that at least falls short of something major. I was doing my best at the time, and I was sort of aware something was telling me just not to say anything. But it's kind of hard not to say anything.

I made a Tumblr account after seeing a post about the autism community there, I'm entersinging. I don't know if I'm going to do much there, I don't seem to be able to do much at a lot of the places I have an account. No internet or even non-internet computer at home, so, yep.

Well, it wasn't so bad. Except he's almost surely Alzheimic. He was kind of obnoxious at some points, mentioning Pot and wanting to give us all some, fairly loudly, at the restaurant. Then something really rude, which I guess as Bruvva noted, is not worth repeating. Stepmom had said to others the bit about the memory problems.

It was fun, other than that. All of the kids were there, of my family, one stepbro and wife. Also my neice, dad's grandkid. Other one is still at school. I hadn't seen him or stepmom or

There is a theory brewing in my head about some people who have Alzheimers or like my mom have alcoholic dementia. The three people who I know are or I am sure are afflicted have something in common--that they have memories that are are really really bad--of things they did, and of things that were done to them as children. But the memory problem they are having in old age is preventing them from doing anything about their childhood problems or their adult behavior. Weird. I suppose everyone who has those memory problems has that stuff in their past, but it's interesting that those three do.

I had a sort of dream about Mom and Dad. In it I was Hermione Granger, with Harry and Ron. We were in this lonely deserted part of London and I was leaning back on a park bench with all this angst or whatever showing on my face. I remembered after I started dissecting the dream that that reminded me of HErmione after she erased her parents memories of her to keep them safe from the enemy, to keep her parents safe.

This is a bout how the mind blocks out sexual abuse/trauma.[from ordinaryevil.wordpress.com]
( cut because of possible sexual abuse triggersCollapse )

Last week I had this overwhelming feeling creep up on me that--I don't HAVE to remember. I don't have to remember everything that happened to me to be honest. I have always thought that I should KNOW everything that every abusive person did to me and if possible, sue their ass off and get them thrown in jail. Or at least sully their reputation. Or whatever.

But I've cerainly had the experience of my unremembered trauma sucking the life out of me, I just couldn't hold my life together and there were triggers at time that made things worse. Not remembering was pretty much taking its toll.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana). That seemed to be true for me. I kept getting hurt because of what I did not remember.

Anyway, it was kind of nice to feel relieved of this kind of heavy burden--all the better to relax and regroup and find a good lawyer.